Saturday, October 16, 2010

So proud

Now that we've turned on the heat for the season, I was going around last week closing up the house for the fall (sigh) by making sure that all the storms were firmly closed and the sash of the double hungs tightly drawn closed.
I noticed that on one of the windows the sash cord had broken, probably a while ago, and needed to be replaced. This is not terribly hard, but is kind of dirty and fiddly. First you have to pry off the stop bead, which in this case had been well and truly painted on, then you remove the sash from the opening, and there's a little side access panel where you get to the weights. You thread the new cord down over the pulley, tie it to the weight, and then cut it to the right length and tie a knot in the end, which you feed into the corresponding notch in the side of the sash. Put it all back together and "voila",working window.
This took me about 40 minutes, and the thing that I'm "proud" of myself for, is that I was tempted, but did not get sucked into scraping off the old paint, re-puttying it, re-painting it etc. I was almost out the door to the hardware store to get glazing putty, when I decided: NO, I have too many other projects, this window is OK as it is, and will not get any worse if i don't fix it today.

Yes, someday it would be great to spend a couple of weeks fixing up these great old windows, making them smooth to operate and more energy efficient. But today is not that day, and I'm proud that I was able to walk away....

3 comments:

I am in awe. We have any number of old windows that need TLC but I have not had the courage to try to fix them. You make it sounds such a reasonable thing to do, whereas I fear that I would end up living through a winter with the window wide open.

Have you fiddled more with your DL-1 brake conversion? or is that down the long list of chores?

Broke down and turned the heat on too. I always try to see if I can make it to November...but I have yet to make it.